Change of Heart: Barnes & Noble Colored Pencils

Every so often I rifle through my product stash and reflect on purchases that haven’t received the warmest reception from me. Sometimes this is valid; a product doesn’t perform as expected or has some kind of design flaw that renders it unusable for me. Other times is more a long the lines of the casual prejudice of lowered expectations. Because a product doesn’t look like much, seem like much or clearly announce itself as something that has tremendous value in my life I tend not to work very hard to unearth its potential. Oddly, going through a pen drought where there’s nothing out there I desperately want or need, has caused me to revisit a few products I was “meh” on to see if time has rewritten every line, so to speak.

It seems like me and these Barnes & Noble Colored Pencils got off on the wrong foot. I fully own the fact I’m not the most enthusiastic when it comes to pencils and I believe that perhaps that might have clouded my original review, which was quite cheeky! Listen to this mess:

These soft lead pencils seem both in quality and writing performance to be on par with the colored pencils made by Crayola or Roseart. There is nothing particularly noteworthy about the way they lay down a line or faithfully render lollipop trees, “M” birds. cotton ball clouds or smiley face suns.

Everyone has an off day where an otherwise serviceable product gets the bums rush (I still stand by my review of most The Write Dudes products). I definitely missed the boat on these colored pencils the first time around. I could blame the fact their price point made me scoff or that I wasn’t properly invested because they were an impulse purchase for me by a friend (though that says some pretty damning things about my gratitude when receiving gifts). Anyway, the pencils have a larger than average barrel, which I prefer and once I got the hang of using them (you know, by watching a few youtube videos about drawing with color pencils) I could get them to do all the things I claimed they were unable to do before! It’s like making something work by finally opting to read the instructions.

Nevertheless, I can’t walk away for attractively packaged pencils, regardless of my own feelings towards using them. This attractively house set of 16 colored pencils, with their sleek, faux old timey styling and the packaging evoking generic brand food products was pretty difficult to ignore. Every time I go into Barnes & Noble I see sets of their pencils and every time I paw them before remembering I don’t actually use pencils nor wish to part with seven bucks because the packaging reminds me of the generic version of Apple Jacks, otherwise known as Apple Dapples.

Turns out they make lolly pop trees just fine! Still haven’t figured out why most little kids (and grown up little kids) still draw trees with knotholes in them! I know I don’t recall ever seeing a tree with a knothole in it!